"Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon," said Akira Kurosawa. Well, now's your chance. Over the next few weeks, visitors to the British Film Institute will be able to watch some of Satyajit Ray's best work: Days and Nights in the Forest, The Chess Players, Company Limited, The Home and The World. What makes them so good? Partly his collective of collaborators: extraordinary actors such as Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, the cinematographer Subrata Mitra. But his greatest films are marked by an ability to depict realistic situations – the hopelessness of a graduate's job hunt, say, or the hardships of life in a Bengali village – and remain alive to both their political and aesthetic dimensions. Ray can compose striking images; but he also engages with gender politics, economics, oppression. He is that rare thing among film-makers: one who fully uses eyes, brain and heart.